The Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA) requires the Director of the Institute “to establish necessary procedures for technical and scientific peer review of the activities of the Institute” to assure that “scientifically based research standards” are applied to the work of the Institute, including the funding of grant applications and the products that are published by the Institute. To that end, the Standards and Review Office was created and staffed within the Office of the Deputy Director for Science of the Institute.